Many organizations have various databases storing information that relates to their business. The problem faced by organizations is the difficulty in effectively structuring and using information in management problem solving and decision-making. This problem can be attributed to several factors, such as, how information is presented to solve similar types of problems can differ within an organization, how the information is interpreted for similar types of problems is inconsistent or varies across decision-makers in the organization, the analytic skills vary across decision-makers in like roles within the organization, required information is unavailable or untimely, required information is unreliable, and required information is not delivered in a form that provides insight. As a result, there is lower than expected levels of adoption and return on investment. The invisible cost is the impact of slow or less informed decision-making on organizational results.
Some existing business intelligence tools attempt to address the business intelligence related information delivery problems through iterations of detailed report requirements gathering, report design, and authoring. This approach involves costly and time-consuming manual processes, which can be performed by skilled and knowledgeable system personnel only.
Some enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems provide selections of predefined reports. However, these predefined reports are often not used because they do not meet the specific business requirements of end users.
It is therefore desirable to provide a mechanism that can deliver business information which are useful in making informed decision, and support a consistent and reliable view for analysis of similar types of problems across the business.